It’s the final issue of Fallen Angels this week as issue #6 wraps up Bryan Hill and Szymon Kudranski’s action series thrusting Psylocke into a leadership role against a Apoth. This new villain was responsible for the creation of a dangerous new cyber drug called Overclock which weaponizes children against their will. This series has been a mix of poetic captions with a deeply introspective narrative voice that has more or less not quite worked due to a variety of reasons. That said, can Hill and Judranski stick any kind of landing on this finale?
The answer is…sort of? This book has been the weakest of the Dawn of X titles and sadly has great ideas within that just don’t pan out well. Psylocke’s search for an identity is masked in confusing thoughts and equally confusing opponents in a narrative that bounces between cloudy flashbacks and poorly constructed fight scenes dragging other mutants like Cable into the mix. This issue achieves the goal of showcasing Pyslocke’s incredible psionic abilities, closing the door on the evil version of Apoth, and setting up a favor for Mr. Sinister likely to be used in Hellions. Apart from these details, it’s a book you could skim and glean all that you need to know.
Fly like a butterfly! Sting like a bee?
Credit: Marvel Comics
Possibly the coolest image in the whole series involves Psylocke and some psionic butterfly wings. Kudranski depicts Pyslocke’s flight in a beautiful way and the imagery matches up with the narrative captions Hill has laid out. There’s a therapeutic message in there somewhere about Pyloscke rising up and moving on, although it’s not quite clear.
Unfortunately, it’s hard to care when Psylocke fights Apoth, which she gets to do one-on-one due to Laura and Cable getting to fight some pointless drones. Apoth has largely been a threat that looked cool but is faceless with little character development. It is nice to know this threat is vanquished for now though so we can put this entire series to bed.
X-Men fans will want to wait till the last pages which involve Mr. Sinister. His inclusion in the story has been an interesting one since he’s obviously evil, but with new Krakoan laws, he plays nice with everyone. There are seeds here between Psylocke and Mr. Sinister that will pay off in some way later down the road. Kudranski’s art always shines when Mr. Sinister is on the page as he’s good at embellishing his dank lair and pasty white features.
Fallen Angels ends this week and it serves as a six-issue series that has plenty of ideas but doesn’t know how to execute on them. I was worried this series wouldn’t put a period on things since it was so vague and unsure of itself along the way. Thankfully we can put this sliver of a story to bed and move on. Psylocke fans should enjoy this issue for its message about her growth as a character, but even then it’s hard to deny it feels unearned due to the ineffectiveness of this narrative.
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